Dear Diary

Post makeup lesson one: I should have applied vaseline.

It's the little things that "everyone knows" that trip a body up. In this case, "everyone knows" to put vaseline on body hair before applying sticky stuff.

Not I, said the mouse.

Following the usual thing-making, I shall be posting pics of my horrible face again. Be warned.

[Shown here: reassembled clock]

Beloved drilled some holes and we re-screwed in the embellishments. The bell will be pointing towards my rear, so people will be able to sneak up behind me and ring my bell.

I suspect I will get firkin tired of that feature before the middle of the first day.

The printed belt clips were superglued on after this. And to make certain that the crankshaft didn't cause slippage, I rested it in the hole of a spool during drying.

[Shown here: ageing test prep]

[Shown here: one of my more... unorthadox instruments]

So far, just ironing the card has only made wear marks. Which I welcome, but I'd rather have yellowing.

So now I'm painting the dratted thing with tea.

For best results, use cheap, generic, black tea. I wound up using two teabags and just letting them sit in the cup so I can have loads of tannin.

And to ease curling, a pot of clean water and a second brush, to wet the other side.

[Shown here: tea]

This is the first dunking of the teabag, and about the shade that I have my usual cuppa. Testing with this much tannin was unsatisfactory, and I went with the extra soak.

A note on cheap tea. My childhood was full of this stuff. Just sniffing the packet brought back a thousand childhood winter evenings, snuggled up on the bean bags with the fluffy dressing gown on and three blankets, and maybe a dog.

Said tea smell didn't do anything for Beloved. More's the pity.

[Shown here: test "photo" post-ironing and post-tea]

If you want to make paper or card look really battered - iron it when it's wet. I had the iron set to the Silk setting so it didn't scorch.

This is after three layers of tea and three wet ironings. It looks really manky. Which is what I'm sort of going for, but not too manky. Bitzer did try to look after her Maman's photo, after all.

I might do one or two wet ironings after I'm done painting the star prop.

[Shown here: some of my paperweight collection, pressed into service]

If you want to have liquid stains, you have to do them traditionally. I tried accelerating these with a hair dryer, but the results were negligable.

Multiple paintings with tea do give a piece that 'been around' look that I was going for. And I was really lucky that the ink from the pens didn't run.

[Shown here: more of my collection hard at work]

Painting over this with tea didn't erase the drip marks, thank goodness. And employing actual paperweights in combination with natural drying is super-effective at keeping the item flat. Who knew?

I'm going to try oven-drying the test piece, later today, to see if that has any effect on the ageing process.

And now - on with the ugly.

[Shown here: post-removal of the mask piece]

Peeling the mask straight off is painful but do-able. I'd proved that the glue sticks for hours on end. And I have no idea how Rust Brown got on my cheek when I never applied any there.

The back of the mask is now predictably filthy. I got lots of the stuff off with a damp sponge, but it's the back of the mask, it doesn't really matter how clean it is, as long as the glue works.

[Shown here: post wet flannel and baby wipes]

I think I shall be packing my own flannel. For best results, use the flannel to remove the majority and clean up with the baby wipes. I did the opposite and paid the price.

On the plus side, baby wipes seemed to work miracles with the wax, rubbing it off in great big pills.

But not all wax.

As you can see, it still looks like I have The Spine's eyebrows.

[Shown here: passing for normal]

After a hot shower and a lot of scrubbing with the shower puff, there's still wax in my eyebrows, but nobody can tell.

Fingers crossed, I'll be able to get the last of it out with subsequent showerings.

Oh - and I'm going to put on some gloves, the next time I do my makeup. Sure, you can remove it all with soap and water, but I'd rather just shed the stains and move onwards.